The bronze age and the Celtic world - Universal History Library

THE IRON SWORD 121
some came into contact with the humble iron-using people on the southern slopes of
the Caucasus. Whether they approached these people to trade or to acquire
some commodity in which they themselves were lacking, or whether they sought
them to obtain their daughters for wives, we know not ; aU we can be sure is that
some intercourse took place. It seems clear, too, that it was from their
humble neighbours that the Koban-folk learned of the existence of iron
or steel, and how to work that metal. It was not small knives they needed,
but better blades for their trusty swords. Thus, I believe, the use of
iron was first learned by the peoples of Europe.
This discovery must have been made by iioo B.C. at the latest
probably some years earlier. The Koban-folk realised that steel blades
were far superior to those of bronze, and doubtless were anxious to show
off their new acquisition before the old folks at home. They may, too,
have remembered that the stone from which their neighbours extracted
the metal was plentiful in some parts of the old country. Whatever the
cause, I beheve that some of them returned to Hungary with their new
discovery, before bronze swords of Type F had been evolved or at any rate
had come into general use.
Iron ore, which could easily be worked by primitive methods,
occurs in Transylvania, at Gyalar," and it seems likely that it was in
this neighbourhood that they first settled. It is also possible that about
FIG. 22.
sword from
this time some of them occupied Thrace, for in early days Thracian swords
had a great reputation.'^ By degrees they pushed up the Danube, at any rate as far as
its junction with the Save. Before looo B.C. a large number of them advanced up the
Morava and down the Vardar and soon afterwards entered Thessaly, whence they
started on that series of conquests known as the return of the Heraclids, or the Dorian
invasion of Greece.'*
Many of these Koban-folk settled on the southern bank of the Danube and the
Save, and in the hill country behind ; various cemeteries of this time have been
»» Gowland (1899) 319 ; cf. J. I.S.I. (1897) lii. 205.
'3 Homer, //. xiii. 576 ; xxiii. 808.
14 Casson (1921) 1, 2.